Mar 08, 2012 By Rob Gutro and Ed Olsen

Tornado seen on the ground on in Madison or Limestone County, Alabama during the March 2, 2012 outbreak. Credit: WHNT News 19 Staff, viewers

A NASA satellite used infrared and microwave "vision" to analyze the storm system that created the March 3 severe weather outbreak in the U.S.

On March 3, 2012, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared and microwave data of the front that generated the severe weather during the early morning and early afternoon hours.

Aqua satellite and captured this infrared look at the front (purple and blue) that triggered the severe weather at 07:11 UTC (2:11 a.m. EST) over central Alabama, northern Georgia and the western part of the Carolinas. The strongest thunderstorms with the coldest cloud tops appear in purple. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen

On the Aqua satellite's first overpass on March 3, infrared data from AIRS showed the strong low pressure area centered on the Great Lake that powered a cold front into the U.S. South and ahead of the front lay an incursion of unusually warm moist air. Where the two met, a line of severe thunderstorms developed which spawned the killer tornadoes and damaging straight line wind storms. "The infrared imagery for the (first) descending pass shows the very cold cloud tops stretching from Alabama to beyond the coastline of Massachusetts," said Ed Olsen of the AIRS Team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who creates the images with AIRS data. Cloud top temperatures were as cold as -70 Celsius (-94 Fahrenheit) in some of the storms, which indicated powerful thunderstorms with very high cloud tops.

"The AIRS microwave imagery indicates heaviest precipitation in a band stretching across Alabama and Georgia," Olsen said.

Aqua satellite and captured this microwave look at the front that triggered the severe weather March 3, 2012 at 07:11 UTC (2:11 a.m. EST) over central Alabama, northern Georgia and the western part of the Carolinas. The AIRS microwave imagery indicates heaviest precipitation in a band stretching across Alabama and Georgia. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center (SPC) report map for March 3, 2012 indicated 12 reports of tornadoes, 34 reports of high winds, and 2 reports of hail from southern South Carolina, to southern Georgia, and northern and central Florida. Tornado reports in Georgia came from the towns of Colquitt, Meigs, Hansell, Pelham, Branchville, two tornadoes reported near Moody Air Force Base and two near Vada. In Florida, tornadoes were reported in Branchville and Wetumpka. For a detailed report from the SPC, visit: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/120303_rpts.html .

The day before, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) reported 144 tornadoes, 307 high wind reports, and 464 reports of hail in Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi, West Virginia, Virginia and Ohio. For a detailed report from the SPC, visit: www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/120302_rpts.html .

When NASA's Aqua satellite made an afternoon orbit over the southeastern U.S. on March 3, infrared imagery showed the severe weather band at the coastline, with a strong storm system over southern Georgia. The microwave imagery showed strong convection and rain over southern Georgia.

Related Stories

A powerful storm system with a history of severe weather continues to march across the U.S. and toward the east coast today. The low and associated cold front was captured in a two-day animation of GOES-13 satellite imagery.

Another powerful weather system is moving through the central and eastern U.S., generating more severe weather. NASA created an animation of data from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite that shows the frontal system ...

The GOES-13 satellite captured images of the powerful weather system that triggered severe weather in the southern U.S. this weekend, and NASA created an animation to show its progression. GOES-13 satellite ...

A satellite animation of NOAA's GOES-13 satellite imagery showed the movement of the front that triggered severe storms and tornadoes in several states on February 29, 2012. Today, NASA released a GOES satellite ...

Tornadoes are expected to accompany severe storms in the springtime in the U.S., but this time of year they also usually happen. When a line of severe thunderstorms associated with a cold front swept through ...

Recommended for you

An analysis of buildings tagged red and yellow by structural engineers after the August 2014 earthquake in Napa links pre-1950 buildings and the underlying sedimentary basin to the greatest shaking damage, ...

As everyone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area knows, the Earth moves under our feet. But what about the stresses that cause earthquakes? How much is known about them? Until now, our understanding of ...

(Phys.org)—A trio of researchers with the Indian Institute of Science has found, via computer simulation, that deforestation in one part of the world can impact rainfall patterns in another. In their paper ...

It's no surprise that Arctic sea ice is thinning. What is new is just how long, how steadily, and how much it has declined. University of Washington researchers compiled modern and historic measurements to ...

Reasearchers at the University of Cadiz have carried out a study that establishes the atmospheric conditions responsible for the generation of extreme meteorological events in the Gulf of Cadiz, which can ...

User comments : 0

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.

Javascript is currently disabled in your web browser. For full site functionality, it is necessary to enable Javascript.
In order to enable it, please see these instructions.